Personally I'd leave the treasure as is, due to action economy your players will able to do way more, expending much less. Treasure is useful for bringing your player power if they're falling behind but with 6 players it will actually take a long time for them to fall behind. You sure as hell DON'T want to give a large group more money!
Treasure is an advantage, a large group is advantage, adding both of them together is a MASSIVE advantage.
For encounters it's a tough thing to balance as there's no "one size fits all" solution. Assuming you understand the math behind CR adding +2 CR to each encounter and filling the battles out with the appropriate mooks should vaguely ballpark where you need to be. Max HP for enemies should be as standard but using the advanced template should only be applied sparingly as it's too much for level 1 characters to handle.
Don't be worried too much about balancing encounters from step one, as an early party wipe is not where you want to end up. Start off with max hp on enemies to begin with and allow a few sessions to gauge your player power.
|
I largely agree with Deadalready. The simplest and most effective thing to do here is to double enemy health and leave treasure the same. Doubling health will make fights last longer and give enemies a chance, and leaving treasure the same will slow down the character's progression a bit towards where it should be.
Also, don't be afraid to fudge rolls to make fights closer and more interesting.
Point buy for your PCs is your biggest concern, IMHO. The higher the buy the tougher and stronger they become.
Next up is their level of "optimization", certain styles/types of characters are just going to be "better" at defeating encounters.
Party dynamics is another big one. If the group works as a group, and not a herd of cats, they can be tougher than expected.
I mostly agree with the above posters.
For my larger groups I normally use max hit points on all encounters.
"Boss" Fights max +50%.
And that is really about all I normally change, besides increasing treasure by 50%.
Adventurers below the listed WBL guidelines often can not meet the benchmarks needed at certain levels. Lack of treasure can reduce the EPL making death much more likely.
When scaling your encounters, I always have to remind myself of one simple idea, The PCs are supposed to win. Keep that in mind and it will turn out well.
Agreed with Deadalready and Broken Zenith.
1) Start with max hp on all enemies
2) If that is not enough, increase number of minions by 50%. There are no solo boss fights. Add minions if there are not any.
3) If this is not sufficient, add advanced template to creatures as necessary.
Definitely don't increase treasure. Wealth = power. Giving them more wealth means giving them more power. If you're already trying to increase the challenge to compensate for increased power from number of players, you shouldn't give them increased wealth because it will counteract what you're trying to do by making enemies stronger.